Monday, May 5, 2025
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Impeach him a hundred times if we have to: Trump lies that jury trials are needed for immigration cases
... "We’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials", he said. ... That would not require full trials, as Trump suggested. ...
This is the same slow-walking of the law and trying an end run around the law and fundamental disrespect for the law that we see all too often and increasingly from presidents from both political parties.
We are either a nation of laws or we are no longer America.
Sick of this bullshit.
The War Powers clock is ticking: The US military has been bombing Yemeni Houthis since March 15 but the Houthis can still strike Israel
A missile from Yemen halts flights in Israel hours before top officials vote on plans for Gaza war
... Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said in a video statement that the group fired a hypersonic ballistic missile at the airport. ...
Saturday, May 3, 2025
Trump's tariffs will bankrupt thousands of American businesses and millions will be unemployed as a result
So says Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport, in The Wall Street Journal, here:
... If the tariffs on Chinese goods continue at this rate, he says, thousands of American companies will fail and millions of employees will lose their jobs. ...
When the pandemic clogged up supply chains, he rented a boat so he could tour the Port of Long Beach, Calif., and see the bottlenecks for himself.
When he’s not cruising around ports for information, he’s getting it directly from his company’s 13,000 customers. They are companies that sell electronics, furniture, clothing, toys, diapers, pet feeders—basically everything. He makes it a priority to talk with as many of them as he possibly can. ...
This past week, he traveled from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., where he spent two days meeting with government officials to make the case that tariffs pose an existential threat to his customers. ...
Apparently some idiot in the White House fed Trump the $1.98 price of wholesale, unfinished gasoline as the price paid by consumers at the pump
... Trump repeated this inaccurate assertion about three $1.98 states at least three times this week. Then, during a commencement address at the University of Alabama on Thursday night, he used an even lower figure. ...
More.
Friday, May 2, 2025
Federal employment is 1.1% of civilian population in April 2025: This is the swamp billionaires want to drain
The worst it ever got was 2.4% in December 1952 while Truman was still president.
The leisure class of state capitalism has to have something to complain about.
Trump's word is meaningless: Mike Waltz goes from secure job as National Security Advisor to UN Ambassador in a matter of just a few days
Something Elise Stefanik also knows only too well lol.
Trump national security advisor Mike Waltz leaving post after Signal scandal
... Trump earlier this week told The Atlantic that Waltz’s job was secure. ...
Asked if Hegseth would stay in the administration longer than Waltz, Trump replied, “Waltz is fine. I mean, he’s here. He just left this office. He’s fine. He was beat up also.” ...
Once again, Trump is wrong because the executive does not possess the line-item veto
This is simply another example of executive branch overreach.
Funding for NPR and PBS, with which I disagree, is lawful. It has been passed by Congress and signed into law by the executive.
This executive can't simply come along and exercise a veto after that fact.
Rule by executive order is not republicanism.
We are either a nation of laws or we are not.
Trump is the enemy of the America I once knew.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Resolution by Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul to scrap Trump's craziest tariffs fails 49-49
Senate resolution to scrap Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs fails despite some GOP support
A Senate vote to scrap President Trump’s wide-ranging “Liberation Day” tariffs narrowly failed on Wednesday, sparing Republicans a second consecutive blow as the president’s trade policy continues to face opposition.
Three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Rand Paul (Ky.) — voted in favor of the resolution alongside every present Senate Democrat.
But Democrats ran into attendance problems. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was absent, along with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had voted in favor of a similar bill reversing tariffs on Canada earlier this month.
The final tally was 49-49.
McConnell and Whitehouse had both missed the two votes earlier in the day. One Senate GOP member told The Hill that McConnell was sick and unable to vote. ...
Since 2007 nominal GDP has been growing at a compound annual rate nearly 40% worse than the rate which prevailed from 1947 to 2007
1Q1947-1Q2007: 7.01%
1Q2007-1Q2025: 4.23%
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Core pce inflation numbers were finally updated in this chart by the BEA at 147pm EDT showing revisions but the same old story: No core inflation progress in a year
Core inflation in Mar 2025 year over year is 2.64%, still ahead of the lowest reading in the last year at 2.63% in Jun 2024.
Core inflation has been sideways for a year and more, and nowhere near 2% or below as in the pre-pandemic era.
The revised 2.96% for Feb 2025 is equivalent to the 2.97% reading in Mar 2024.
That Feb spike helps explain why the 1Q2025 reading was up 3.5% from 4Q2024.
It's nearly noon and this chart of core personal consumption expenditures still isn't updated with the data due out today because the Department of Commerce which oversees the BEA is now run by the incompetent Howard Lutnick
CNBC usually runs a big story on core personal consumption expenditures before 9:00 AM every month when this report comes out, but not now under Howard Lutnick.
Nosebleed valuations continue despite recent stock market declines
It's a long way down to normal.
The 2022 lows got us back only to the 2000 high, and people thought it was the end of the world when all it was was a good beginning lol.
Nominal GDP in 1Q2025 is estimated at $29.9776 trillion by the BEA this morning.
$SPX closed at 5611.85 on March 31, 2025.
That yields a ratio of 187 vs. the historical mean of 81, or 131% overvalued.
Guru Focus gets similar results from the Buffett Indicator:
ADP private payrolls miss the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 120k new jobs by 48%
... the smallest gain since July 2024 ...
Real GDP shrank 0.3% in 1Q2025
Shrink, shrank, shrunk.
U.S. economy shrunk 0.3% in the first quarter as Trump policy uncertainty weighed on businesses
... fueled by an unexpected rise in imports as companies and consumers sought to get ahead of the Trump tariffs ...
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Popular support for Canada's Conservatives was actually tops in 2021 at 5.7 million votes, but in 2025 falls to second place at 8.06 million
In neither case however did Conservatives gain enough seats to form a government.
The Conservative Pierre Poilievre loses this election to the Liberal Mark Carney.
After Liberal Justin Trudeau resigned as PM in January, Carney became Liberal Party leader and PM in March, and promptly eliminated the consumer carbon tax ahead of this election, taking away a key issue of the Conservatives.
That, and Trump's hostility toward Canada, made this election outcome a fait accompli.
The US Navy lost an F/A-18 and its tractor off the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier evading a Houthi missile in the Red Sea yesterday according to reports, but that's not the real story
This story, for example, says nothing about evading a Houthi missile.
Fighter jet slips off carrier hangar deck in Red Sea, one minor injury
And is this even the Truman?
I mean, that's an F-35 going in the drink, not the same jet.
You can't trust anybody these days apparently.
LOL Stephen L. Miller puts his illiteracy in the headlines now
Journalists gloss over. My eyes glaze over.
So embarrassing.
Globalist Rod Dreher draws a red line in Canada lol, America's just chopped liver
Rod Dreher, world citizen.
Tomorrow is a big day for economic reports: Core pce inflation and 1Q2025 real GDP
The consensus estimate for tomorrow's core pce inflation number is 2.6% year over year in March, and 0.1% month over month. In February the actual numbers were 2.8% year over year and 0.4% month over month.
The consensus estimate for tomorrow's real GDP estimate is 0.4% vs. 2.4% actual the previous quarter. Yes, you read that right, 0.4%. GDPNow's final read on 1Q2025 out this morning is . . . -2.7%.
Yikes.
The ADP employment change will also be reported. Consensus is for +108,000 vs. +155,000 actual the previous month.
Nonfarm payrolls comes out on Friday. Consensus is for +130,000 for April vs. +228,000 actual in March.
Monday, April 28, 2025
Fareed Zakaria: Trump uses an unprecedented eight national emergency declarations for his own end run around the constitution, the Congress, and the courts
... Trump has declared eight national emergencies in his first 100 days, more than any other president. ...
Invoking an emergency has come to mean that the president can bypass Congress, intimidate courts, and run roughshod over normal procedures, even civil liberties. And while the current number is striking, it’s not a Trumpian innovation. Presidents have become addicted to emergency powers, unlike many other countries. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about how to declare or end an emergency. This has allowed presidents to organically assume a wide range of powers. This usually happened during wartime. ...
Today, Americans are living under dozens of ongoing national emergencies, mostly tied to foreign policy like sanctions. The oldest standing one, targeting Iran, dates back to the Carter administration. Others come from the post-9/11 era, when Congress granted the executive branch sweeping new powers, all in the name of national security. Both parties have used emergency powers to serve their broader agendas. In 2022, President Joe Biden attempted to forgive student loan debt by using an emergency authority related to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
More.
Like failing to establish a formula for the continued growth of representation, thus unwittingly concentrating power in an oligarchic Congress by default, the constitution's silence about emergencies is yet one more example of the founders' inability to imagine every which way one branch might try to exploit it, which is an increasingly pressing problem in our increasingly illiberal society.
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Saturday, April 26, 2025
I worked for a guy once who everyday wore a blue suit without fail
I remember he officiated at a funeral once, and yep, he wore a blue suit.
Even when I visited him at his home he was wearing a blue suit.
More remarkably, though, on pay day once a month my boss would go to the bank, take out a wad of cash, and then pay his mortgage in cash, walk to the phone company and pay in cash, and walk to the utility company and pay in cash.
He'd also pay me in cash.
Then he'd walk to the hotel bar with his friends for the evening and pay in cash.
He paid for everything in cash, unlike this guy.
Standards have really declined.
Friday, April 25, 2025
Ding dong Howard Lutnick says we're going to be training all those new factory workers how to spy lol
And Elon Musk wanted this guy to be Treasury Secretary instead of Bessent, which is even funnier.
This week's US Treasury auctions indicated the opposite of rising interest rates
As usual the alarmists and doomsayers are . . . alarmists and doomsayers.
Demand for US debt is steady and strong this week:
3MO at 4.225% average vs. 4.225% previously
6MO at 4.05 vs. 4.06 previously
2Y at 3.795 vs. 3.984 previously
5Y at 3.995 vs. 4.1 previously
7Y at 4.123 vs. 4.233 previously.
Yields across the curve last night averaged 4.240, down from 4.261 a week ago, below the Daily Fed Funds Rate at 4.33.
The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model has been in the toilet since the end of February, latest snapshot for 1Q2025 is -2.5%
The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.5 percent on April 24, down from -2.2 percent on April 17.
More.
The BEA's first estimate of first quarter real GDP is scheduled for release on April 30th.
Thursday, April 24, 2025
A Trump-appointed judge has ordered another Venezuelan wrongly deported to El Salvador returned to the United States
... U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher in Baltimore on Wednesday ruled that removing him without a chance to complete his asylum petition or challenge his deportation violated the settlement agreement. Cristian, and any other person who had been removed in violation of the settlement agreement, should be returned, she said. ...
More.
I don't normally pay any attention to the left's critique of the right as misogynist, but Breitbart's John Nolte changes my mind
... By politely and factually shoving all that disgrace in their smug faces, Tim Pool diminished and embarrassed the media elite, which is crucial in our noble crusade to someday enjoy the lamentations of their women. ...
More.
The cruelty is indeed the point of MAGA.
Chicoms tell Trump to go pound sand
China says no ongoing trade talks with the U.S., calls for canceling ‘unilateral’ tariffs
"At present there are absolutely no negotiations on the economy and trade
between China and the U.S.,” said Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He
Yadong. ... "If the U.S. really wants to resolve the problem ... it should cancel all the unilateral measures on China,” He said.
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Elon Musk and Scott Bessent got into a shouting match in the White House last Thursday which included Bessent loudly criticizing Musk for overpromising and under-delivering DOGE cuts
The Treasury Secretary would know, of course, because he has to report income and outlays every month.
One person who witnessed the dispute said:
It was quite a scene. It was loud. And I mean, loud.
The story is here.
Pyrex glass plant in Charleroi PA closes after 132 years because of Chinese imports, Trump powerless to stop it
The casualties of America’s loss of glassware manufacturing to China
... Anchor
Hocking took over the Charleroi plant in March of 2024 and announced
they would close it and move operations to their plant in Lancaster,
Ohio — it too was a company founded at the turn of the century by Isaac
Jacob in Lancaster, Ohio. ...
... the U.S. glass industry lost almost 40,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 to 2008. At the same time, China’s share of the U.S. market rose from 3% to 31%.
As
U.S. glass and glassware plants closed, Chinese manufacturers expanded.
China now leads glass production globally, exporting 28.7% of the
world’s glass and glassware compared to the United States’ 6.6%.
That is a hard pill to swallow if you are from Charleroi, once known as the “Glass City” where PPG once had one of its major glass factories. ...
More.
Trump's tariffs mean that the skies will be empty, along with the shelves
Boeing hopes to find new buyers for up to 50 planes returned by China
... Two Boeing jets have returned to the US from China,
with another on the way, after the imposition of steep 125% tariffs on
American imports. China imposed the levies in retaliation to the White
House’s 145% rate that threatens to significantly slow down the world
economy. ...
Blank Sailings Rattle Trans-Pacific Trade as China Imports Nosedive
... Container shipping companies have blanked at least 80 sailings this month, compared to 51 in March 2020, when volumes crashed amid early Covid-19 lockdowns, Sea-Intelligence said. ...
The US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent is under fire for market manipulation because he made closed-door comments yesterday morning to big shots gathered for IMF and World Bank meetings
Bloomberg published the story just before noon on Tuesday reporting the closed-door meeting where Bessent said he expected the tariff stand-off with China to de-escalate, and that the current situation, which amounts to a trade embargo, is unsustainable and will de-escalate in the very near future.
Markets opened Tuesday morning strongly higher and by 11:00 AM were up 110 points on the $SPX.
The Secretary of the Treasury shouldn't be having closed door meetings with the very people most likely to profit from what he has to say.
This is quite literally fascist economics.
Spot gold retreats 5.5% from record high $3,500.05
... Spot gold slipped 2.2% at $3,305.79 an ounce by 09:23 a.m. ET (1323 GMT), after hitting a record high of $3,500.05 in the previous session. U.S. gold futures dropped 2.9% to $3,320.40. ...
More.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Real Clear Politics puts up a discussion between two billionaires 43% of whose business is government contracts demanding that government bureaucrats be prosecuted for fraud
The chutzpah of these parasites is really something, but Real Clear should be ashamed for promoting it.
The billionaires complain that expenditures far outpace revenues, but taxes must never be raised to pay for them:
"My answer on tax policy, what should tax rates be? Just always a little bit lower. I'm not going to tell you the number, they should always be a little bit lower."
Billionaires for tax cuts!
Meanwhile the $40 billion USAID budget was nothing but a virtue signaling food for the poor scam to these two:
"And so much of this left-wing philanthropy nonprofit world, I think it was just a cover for borderline criminal activity."
Spot gold touches record high of $3,473.03 in early trading, later climbs to $3,500.05
Spot gold was up 1.4% at $3,472.49 an ounce, as of 0247 GMT, after touching a record high of $3,473.03 per ounce earlier in the session.
More.
Monday, April 21, 2025
NY Governor Hochul tells Mad King Ludwig to go pound sand
... The Trump administration sought to kill the program on Feb. 19, with the president declaring himself “king” in a social media post that celebrated the potential end of congestion pricing. ...
Hochul fought back, declaring: “The cameras are staying on.” ...
Gold futures surge above $3,400 per ounce
Gold surges to a record above $3,400 as Trump threatens Fed independence
Gold prices broke $3,400 on Monday, hitting a new record as President Donald Trump’s threats against the Federal Reserve’s independence and his tariffs shake investor confidence in the U.S. economy.
Gold futures jumped about 2.69% to $3,418 per ounce by 8:20 a.m. ET on Monday, with investors buying the precious metal as the dollar hit a three-year low.
Gold has jumped about 29% since the start of the year and nearly 8% since Trump unveiled his sweeping tariffs on April 2.
Trump said last Thursday that Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough,” after the U.S. central bank chief warned that the president’s tariffs will likely increase inflation in the near term. ...
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Looks like Trump & Co. blinked on Friday night after discovering the Supremes were getting involved in their latest Venezuelan deportation operation
Video from Friday night shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement buses full of Venezuelan migrants headed toward an airport in North Texas before abruptly turning around before the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must, for now, refrain from deporting Venezuelan men based in the state under the Alien Enemies Act. ...
As the motorcade was headed for the airport, a last-minute federal hearing on the matter was taking place in Washington.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has been hearing a case related to the flights to El Salvador, scheduled an emergency hearing for Friday evening — just hours after a bus rolled up to Bluebonnet.
Shortly before that hearing kicked off, ACLU attorneys also asked the Supreme Court to step in.
“We hear they are on buses on the way to the airport,” said Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU arguing on behalf of detainees on the verge of being deported under the Alien Enemies Act. ...
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